


Watch Your Step

by ehmazing



Category: Hark! A Vagrant
Genre: Gen, Swearing, poop jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a ghost causing trouble in the graveyard, and the Mystery-Solving Teens are on the case!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch Your Step

**Author's Note:**

  * For [basilmemories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/basilmemories/gifts).



_It was a dark and stormy night, or it would have been, if the weather report had been correct. It had rained earlier in the evening but stopped after seven, leaving everything cold and soggy in the night. The sky was indeed clouded and starless, but the streetlights were still on, so that was kind of a moot point._  
  
 _But our heroes braved the mid-November chill and damp and mud nonetheless. They were both young men, lanky, dressed in jeans and hoodies. One was fair-haired, and that fair hair was long enough to cloak his eyes almost completely. The other left his tossled, as if life was a bed he was still struggling to get out of. His face wore a near-permanent scowl, untwisting only when there were girls to hit on or nerds to trip._  
  
 _At the present, the long-haired teen and his unamused partner--oh, I can’t keep going on like this, this is getting ridiculous. We’ll just call them Moppy and Frowny, there’s nothing more distinguishable about them than that. They’re just…teens! They tend to blend together after a while. Seen one, you’ve seen them all._  
  
 _Where were we? Ah, yes._

* * *

  
  
“Shit,” Moppy hissed. The lit blunt fell from his lips and bounced once, twice on the ground before rolling to a halt in the middle of a puddle, hissing as it went out. “Shit!”  
  
Frowny shoved him one-handed. “You can say that again, fuckwad! You just dropped the joint!”  
  
“No,” Moppy said, pointing to his shoe, “shit.” Frowny turned the flashlight to the ground: sure enough, a large pile of feces with a sneaker-shaped imprint lay where Moppy had just tread.  
  
“You’re whining because you were too baked to step around dog crap?”  
  
Moppy wobbled on one foot, examining the sole. One whiff and he gagged, dragging his foot on the grass in an attempt to wipe the worst of the mess away. “Jesus, this smells worse than your mom’s butthole.”  
  
“Fuck off!” Frowny, still bitter over the tragic loss of the joint, didn’t bother waiting. His flashlight passed from headstone to headstone as he trudged on through the wet lawn. “Keep up, will you? I don’t want to be here all fucking night.”  
  
They had gone only a few more yards when Moppy’s foot discovered another surprise.  
  
“Who even walks a dog in the cemetery?!” he moaned, wrenching his foot from a pile even bigger than the first. “Somebody’s stupid chihuahua, pissing on Grandpa.”  
  
Frowny’s frown briefly flinched into a smirking smile. “Ha! Better check out those bones Fido buried in the backyard.” Its job done, his mouth once again reverted to its original sullen state. “I wish we did have a dog, though. A giant bloodhound that could hunt down this stupid zombie for us.”  
  
“It’s not a zombie, dumbass, we’re looking for a ghost,” Moppy reminded him. “Dogs can’t sniff out ghosts.”  
  
“Bullshit, how would you know? Dogs can sniff out letter bombs, why not ghosts?”  
  
“It’s _landmines,_ not letter bombs, who’d use a dog to check for letter bombs--”  
  
“Whatever! The point is, if they can smell things underground, why can’t they smell things that came out of the ground?”  
  
“Because ghosts aren’t zombies, they don’t have a body and stuff. How is a dog supposed to smell something that isn’t--”  
  
A telltale squish. Moppy and Frowny froze, then said together:  
  
 _“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.”_

* * *

 

“Okay. New plan,” Frowny growled, gingerly holding his ruined sneaker by the laces. The teens had seated themselves on a headstone wide enough for two. “We give up this ghost crap and hunt down that dog-walker fucker and paint dicks all over his house.”  
  
 _Excuse me…_  
  
“Hell yeah,” Moppy concurred, shaking his shoes out and ducking from the flying bits of dung. “I’ll paint a dick right on his face! That’s what he is, a dickface.”  
  
 _I beg your pardon--_  
  
“And then we’ll feed his dog its own crap, because dogs eat everything. My aunt had a poodle that ate its own shit all the time. Then he’ll have a dog that shits shit.”  
  
 _Young men, I plead your attention--_  
  
Moppy burst into laughter. “Oh man! That’s sick!”  
  
 ** _HEY!!!_**  
  
The boys froze. There was a strange feeling in the air; both felt odd tremors in their hands, skin prickling with goosebumps. If Moppy’s hair wasn't weighed down with pubescent oil, it might’ve stood on end. The graveyard began filling with thick mist which began to swirl rapidly, forming a column as it whirled.  
  
Then it stopped, and a man stepped out from the gloom.  
  
 _Terribly sorry, that was awfully rude of me,_ he said, adjusting his collar. Like the rest of his clothes it was silver-white and somewhat transparent. His whole body, in fact, was silver-white and somewhat transparent. _But I really do need your help._  
  
“Whoa.” Frowny’s mouth was too busy trying to put its jaw back in place to scowl. “Dude, what was in that joint?”  
  
 _I’m Nikola Tesla,_ the man continued, _and--really, was that necessary?_ Moppy’s sneaker, just thrown, lay in grass as if Tesla had not been standing directly in its path. Which he had been.  
  
“See?” Moppy said. “I told you, ghosts don’t have bodies.”  
  
 _Well! I find that rather offensive!_ Tesla griped. _Just because my form is non-corporeal doesn’t mean that I enjoy being hit with shoes! And certainly not ones covered in horse feces!_  
  
“Wait, horse?” Frowny looked at his own shoes with renewed disgust. “You mean we’ve been walking through horse shit?”  
  
 _Well, not a horse, not exactly._ Tesla sighed. _It’s more of a pony, really. About this big._ He held out his arms in an estimate. _It’s been eating the flowers by my grave and made me most unhappy. You two should have no trouble capturing it! Though you’re a good deal skinnier than I thought, if you work together I’m sure it will be no trouble at all._  
  
“Whoa, whoa.” Frowny’s lips had found their favorite grimace again. “You want us to catch a horse with diarrhea?”  
  
“They didn’t say anything about horses,” Moppy agreed, “just something about the ghost of some dead guy making noise in the graveyard--”  
  
 _Some ‘dead guy’?_ Tesla bristled. _The nerve! I’ll have you know I have more patents to my name than you two have pimples on your faces--_  
  
“Jesus, chill,” Frowny interrupted. “So if we catch this pig--”  
  
Pony!  
  
“--thing, what’s in for us?”  
  
 _Honor! Glory! The satisfaction of knowing you have preserved the memory of one of the greatest minds who ever lived!_  
  
“Yeah, okay,” Moppy picked at a hole in his jeans. “But do you have anything else? Like weed?”  
  
Tesla looked appalled. _You’re speaking with the ghost of the man who invented the alternating current and all you can think about is_ weed?  
  
The teens stared at him expectantly.  
  
 _Yes, alright, fine,_ Tesla sighed, pulling at his moustache. _I’ll get you weed. Just get rid of the pony._  
  
The teens high-fived.

* * *

  
  
The task proved harder than they thought. Though a trail of dung wound through the cemetery, they saw neither snout nor tail of its source.  
  
 _I’m sure it’s around here somewhere_ , Tesla reassured them. _It never wanders very far._  
  
“As long as we get this over with before sunrise,” Frowny said icily. “I have an algebra test to sleep through.”  
  
Finally, they found it, scarfing down the lilies on Ada Lovelace’s grave.  
  
“ _That’s_ the pony?” Moppy shook some hair out of his eyes to get a better look. “Dude, that’s gotta be a pig. Look at how fat it is!”  
  
 _It’s a pony, alright._  
  
“Okay, but what are we supposed to do now, lasso it?” Frowny crossed his arms. “We’re not cowboys, dipshit.”  
  
 _Well then you’d better have something else in mind!_ And with a loud cry, Tesla hurtled himself at them. The teens instantly screamed and fell over backwards.  
  
Right on top of the pony.  
  
“You. Mother. Fucker,” Frowny groaned, as hoof pawed at his back.  
  
 _I’m over 150 years old,_ Tesla said, smoothing back his hair. _Did you really think I depend on teenagers to get things done?_ He threw a coil of ghostly rope at their feet. _That’ll last you until morning, so just lead the pony to Animal Control and everything will taken care of._ He paused, looking over and teens and the dazed pony. _Though I suppose you did earn your weed after all, so--_  
  
 _Yoo hoooooo! Oh Mister Teslaaaaaa!_  
  
Tesla froze. In the distance came a sound that made Moppy and Frowny quake in their bones. What was that? Girls, screaming? Fabric being torn? Buttons popping off of jackets and boots?  
  
A ghost mob, two hundred women strong, came tearing through the graveyard.  
  
Tesla went so pale, he almost disappeared entirely. He uttered only one word.  
  
 _Fuck_  
  
Then he turned on his ghostly heel and vanished.  
  
The women paid Moppy and Frowny no heed as they continued racing by, waving bloomers and corsets in the air. A few fainted and rolled over to the side, their arms flung over headstones and bosoms heaving. When only the stragglers were left, Moppy and Frowny got to their feet and harnessed the pony, who had turned its attention back to Lovelace’s lilies.  
  
“What a dick,” Frowny said, tugging the pony behind them as they headed back toward the graveyard entrance. “All that work and no pay.”  
  
“You said it,” Moppy agreed. “And he still gets more pussy than we do!”  
  
“What an asshole,” Frowny echoed. The pony neighed, and at the crest of the hill, relieved itself of Lovelace’s lilies.

* * *

 

_So ends our tale: the pony returned to its stables and diet of hay; the teens to their algebra test, failed by both; and Tesla to the afterlife, where he continued to elude his many admirers, sometimes resorting to ridiculous disguises to throw them off the scent. The night was dark and damp, but the day broke bright and clear._

_And the graveyard's landscapers had a very unpleasant task ahead._


End file.
